3 Answers
3

If you're documenting code, I'd recommend looking at industry standards. I found several properties on the MSDN (Microsoft Developer's Network) that might help you:

The ApprovalActivity.Threshold property is documented as "This value indicates the total number of approvals that are required in order to approve the request."

The GeoCoordinateWatcher.MovementThreshold property is documented as "The distance that must be moved, in meters, relative to the coordinate from the last PositionChanged event, before the location provider raises another PositionChanged event."

The first property is an int (whole number) and the second one is a double (a non-whole number), which might explain away the "before" off-by-one issue you're having. So, if your parameter is also an int, I might recommend:

"This value indicates the number of ghosts that are required to be seen to trigger a freak-out"

The phrasing “See 3 or more ghosts” is unambiguous, clear, and reasonably concise. The phrasing “See not less than 3 ghosts” also is is concise and unambiguous (because “greater than or equal to” is logically equivalent to “not less than”). However, “x or more” probably will be more quickly understood by more people than will “not less than x”.